


What We Leave Behind

by SometimesWriting



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Molly has been ordered to sort out 221B after Sherlock's faked suicide, Molly makes an interesting discovery in Sherlock's desk drawers, Post-Reichenbach, Pre-Series 3, Pre-The Empty Hearse, Sherlolly - Freeform, Two Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-03-13
Packaged: 2018-03-12 09:36:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3351824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SometimesWriting/pseuds/SometimesWriting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One month has passed since Sherlock's jumped off the roof of St Barts<br/>and left Great Britain to dismantle Moriarty's network.<br/>While Mrs Hudson, Greg and John still grieve for him,<br/>Molly has been asked to look through everything Sherlock's<br/>left behind at 221B and sort it for Mycroft.<br/>When she's almost done, she makes an interesting discovery<br/>in one of Sherlock's desk drawers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. An unexpected discovery

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SwagolasThranduilion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SwagolasThranduilion/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about any typos and comma mistakes,  
> I'm not a native English speaker (sadly).

 

“Well… here we are…“

Molly inhaled softly when Sherlock’s landlady pushed the door to the upper flat of 221B open and revealed the living room. Everything looked the usual. Sherlock’s chair in front of the shelf, John’s opposite it, the fireplace with the skull on the mantelpiece, the couch, the mess on Sherlock’s desk, the coffee table. The only major difference was that John’s desk wasn’t occupied by his laptop, papers and unopened letters anymore. It looked oddly abandoned in the crammed small room.  
A sad sight.

“John has-…?”

“Yes… yes, last week…” Mrs Hudson nodded sorrowfully, “The poor boy… But I understand, Sherlock’s just still so-… present here…”

“Yes…” Molly replied quietly, glancing at the petite elderly lady next to her.

  
She had cried, it didn’t need Sherlock to see that. The unusually rosy blush on her wrinkly cheeks, the pinkness of her nose, and her reddened eyes gave it away to anyone who looked at her these days.  
  
“Mrs Hudson, I’m so-…” Molly began but Mrs Hudson just rested her light small hand on the pathologist’s arm, smiling faintly.  
  
“I know, dear… We’re… We’re going to be okay… It will take some time…”

“Yes… I-… yes…” Molly returned her smile sadly.

It was horrible, seeing everyone grieve for Sherlock, seeing how shocked and hurt they were, knowing they all cried but only ever when they were alone, John, Mrs Hudson, Lestrade, the people that had been closest to Sherlock, but being unable to relieve them of their feeling of guilt. Being unable to tell them that Sherlock was somewhere out there, trying to dismantle every bit of the consulting criminal’s network, and that it wasn’t his corpse they had buried a month ago, but the one of one of Moriarty’s henchmen.

“Mrs Hudson, is there anything I can-…?”, Molly began but the landlady immediately shook her head.

“Oh don’t worry about me, dear… I’ll be fine… I’ll-… leave you alone then… Please feel free to take anything you want… I’ve got all the science equipment packed into those cartons here already but maybe you want-… something that reminds you of him…”, Mrs Hudson sniffed quietly and quickly turned her head away to nod at a couple of cartons next to the coffee table.

“Thank you…”

“Oh don’t mention it. I’m glad you’re taking care of those things… I know now that they’ll be in good hands… Right… I’ll leave you to it then…”

Mrs Hudson turned to head down the stairs after smiling a last time at Molly, and closed the door to the flat, leaving the pathologist to herself.

Molly exhaled deeply through her nose after glancing around the room and then set her handbag down next to the cartons on the floor. Quietly and hesitantly, ironically just like one would behave in the home of a recently deceased, she approached the shelf behind Sherlock’s armchair. She couldn’t help but let her fingertips glide over the soft, worn, black leather of the chair that was covered in a light layer of dust, just like everything else in what used to be the detective’s living room, besides John’s desk.  
For a while she just skimmed through the books Sherlock had left behind. Most of them were about science of course, molecular biology, quantum physics, and biomedical chemistry.  
But there were also some rare exemplars of classic literature. John Keats. William Blake. Oscar Wilde.  
A light smile flashed over her lips when she discovered something and she couldn’t help but pull one book out of its place between an edition of Oscar Wilde’s “ The Ghost Of Canterville” and the Oxford Dictionary:  
“A Practical Manual of Beekeeping: How to Keep Bees and Develop Your Full Potential as an Apiarist” by David Cramp.

She hadn’t known. She’d never known Sherlock had an interest in Beekeeping. Or maybe he’d bought it for an undercover case…? Had it been a gift..? Anyways it had been read. There were a few dog-ears, and when she opened the book to smooth those pages, she saw that on each one of them Sherlock had highlighted small passages.

Molly took her time, unable to stop herself from reading every single one of them, from trying to imagine Sherlock sitting in his chair and flipping through the pages, reading twice as quickly as anybody else she’d ever met, his eyes darting over the words, while John was perhaps typing up their newest case for his blog.

She knew he’d not mind it so after half an hour of reading she set the book down on the cartons Mrs Hudson had prepared for her, before she turned her attention back to the rest of the room.

Another hour later she’d examined all the kitchen cupboards and picked up the last few body parts from the refrigerator, twelve fingers, seven and a half toes and half a brain. Also she’d grabbed a couple of shirts, the only two jumpers Sherlock owned, four trousers, a few suits, socks, two pyjamas and underwear from Sherlock’s closet, as she knew he’d probably stay at her place rather than Mycroft’s when he returned to London every once in a while in between his various trips around the world to dismantle Moriarty’s network, and would complain if he had to wear the clothes she’d bought for him after his “death” again. Of course he‘d known he wasn’t able to go home and pick up some of his own clothes but that hadn’t stopped him from nagging about the reach-me-downs she’d bought and how uncomfortable he felt in them because they didn’t fit right, according to him.  
All that was left was the mess on his desk.

Molly had purposely waited as long as possible with tidying it up because she’d known it would take ages but now she simply didn’t have an excuse anymore. Though she couldn’t help but curse herself for agreeing to sort out Sherlock’s things so John didn’t have to do it. At least she knew she’d saved John a lot of pain this way, by not forcing him to spend time at 221B again. Mycroft Holmes and Greg were either too busy to do it or, in Mycroft’s case, currently not within the UK, and Mrs Hudson definitely couldn’t be bothered with this tedious and physically exhausting work, considering her hip.

With an exasperated sigh she sat down in Sherlock’s desk chair and carefully pulled a huge pile of papers close to her, only to squeak involuntarily when the very instable pile fell over and a flood of paper spilled onto her lap.  
The pathologist groaned softly and then, resigned to her faith, started sorting them all out.  
  
Two and a half hours and three cups of tea later, she’d found a last remain of Earl Grey, sugar and a clean cup in Sherlock’s cupboards (though sadly no milk that wouldn’t have posed a severe risk to her health), the top of his desk was finally tidied up and all important papers were neatly filed into four large lever arch files that rested on the floor.  
Molly’s eyes hurt and she had to open the full-length windows after a while to let in some fresh air and oxygen. Besides, the flat really needed to be thoroughly aerated again.  
So when she pulled the first few drawers of Sherlock’s desk open and lifted more, thankfully smaller, piles of documents out of them, she could hear the faint voices of people who were chatting and sitting in front of Speedy’s down on the street right below the windows.

With angelic patience and endurance she skimmed through the bills, vouchers, bank statements, scribbled notes about complex experiments, old photographs (the ones of Sherlock from his youth caught her attention and, though with a light feeling of guilt and embarrassment, she took a photo of him as a toddler and one of him as a seventeen year old and placed them between the pages of the book about Beekeeping that she’d take home with herself), and eventually all that was left were about 40 letters in their envelopes.  
Most of them were addressed to Sherlock and she put those aside for Mycroft, not wanting to invade Sherlock’s privacy in _that_ way. Also she found some for John, and put them on an extra pile but then she stumbled across something that caught her attention and made her blink confused. On a simple, brown, A4 format envelope it said, in Sherlock’s typical handwriting:

 

MOLLY H.

 

  
  
  


	2. Letters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally managed to write and upload the second part.
> 
> It was quite late when I wrote and corrected this  
> and I don't have a Beta reader, so please be kind to me.
> 
> English is still not my native language  
> and comma rules are still confusing.
> 
> A huge thank you to SwagolasThranduilion who basically wrote 99% of Sherlock's letters!!

Molly hesitated, unsure whether she should risk a glance inside the envelope or not. But then, it was addressed to her after all, wasn’t it? And at least as far as she knew, Sherlock didn’t have any other female acquaintances that went by the name Molly and whose last names started with an H.  
The flap had only been shoved inside of the envelope so it was easy for her to open it and peek inside.  
The contents though were mildly disappointing. The brown envelope contained about twenty smaller and white versions of its kind. Each had a date on it, nothing else.  
The pathologist couldn’t help but feel confused, especially when she pulled the letters out and discovered that the dates they’d been labelled with reached all the way back until 2005, the year in which her and Sherlock had met for the first time and started working with each other, whereas the newest one wasn’t even two weeks old.

Her heart skipped a beat when she realized that it had in fact been written the day Sherlock had disappeared from her flat. The day she’d woken up to find her couch abandoned, the pillow and the duvet Sherlock had been using neatly placed on her small coffee table, with just a simple piece of paper on top that said “Thank you, Molly. –SH”.  
Even though she’d known that day would inevitably come, Molly had still been a bit upset. Within the three weeks they’d shared her flat, it had seemed that her and Sherlock had grown closer. At least that was what she’d thought. Therefore it’d hurt quite a lot that he’d left without a warning, without a proper goodbye, that he had snuck off in the middle of the night.

The petite brunette skimmed through the letters, eighteen in number, until she’d sorted them chronologically, beginning with the oldest one, the one from 2005.

She sliced the envelope open with a knife she found stuck in the mantelpiece,  
and put either aside before she began to read the short letter.

_28 th July 2005  
  
_

_Molly,_

_You cheered me up today,  
coming to see me while I was working.  
Not actually with your jokes,  
joking is not your area,  
but the attempt to make me laugh  
was amusing.  
I don’t mind interruptions if they’re  
from you.  
  
SH_  


Molly blinked. Of course she couldn’t remember what exactly had happened that day, that memory was long lost, but she did know the exact date of her first meeting with Sherlock, and that had been only a couple of months before he’d written this letter.  
On the 14th of March 2005, barely a week after she’d started working at St Barts, Molly had almost gotten a heart attack when at roughly 9AM a complete stranger, wearing a long dark coat, a black designer suit and a simple blue cashmere scarf, had burst through the doors of her morgue and, not bothering to introduce himself, demanded to see the body of Catherine Geiger, one of her patients.  
Of course Molly had denied this request at first, but a lot of stammering had been involved, especially when she’d recognised how handsome her unexpected visitor was and how intensely he stared at her. In fact they way he’d looked her up and down while making his deductions about her, had managed to make her go weak at the knees.  
Molly smiled lopsidedly at the memory. The first couple of years she’d basically spent most of her time around Sherlock stammering and trying to impress him and make him laugh. Clearly she’d not been very successful and in fact she’d always felt like he found her annoying and preferred to be on his own.  
Well, it seemed she’d been mistaken there…  
Molly put the letter aside and picked up the next.

  
_12 th September 2008  
  
_

_Molly,  
  
Thank you for allowing me to  
use the lab even though your new supervisor forbid it.  
I appreciate it.  
Your hair looked nice today.  
  
SH_  


Ah yes. During the summer of 2008 her old supervisor, a lovely man in his fifties named Charles Midwinter, had unexpectedly passed away due to a heart attack.  
Working with his replacement though had proved itself to be rather difficult. Whereas Charles and Sherlock had been old friends, Mrs Aris couldn’t stand him at all, and after the two of them had had a dispute during which he’d casually pointed her husband’s affair with his secretary out to her, she’d banned him from St Bartholomew’s laboratories and morgue.  
Due to Molly’s crush on him though, Sherlock kept regularly paying the hospital’s basement a visit.

While the time passed, Molly slowly read her way through the small pile of letters and the further she got, the more intense the weird feeling in her chest got.  
Like something was pressing down on her lungs and making it hard for her to breathe.

  
_29 th January 2010  
  
Dear Molly,_

_You looked well today.  
Thank you for the coffee.  
You’re the only one who manages  
to make it right.  
I liked your lipstick. You should  
wear it more often.  
  
Sherlock_

_  
_

_2 nd February 2010  
  
Dear Molly,  
  
I noticed you’ve bought a cat,  
its hairs were on your jumper.  
I knew you were a cat person.  
What’s its name?  
  
Sherlock  
  
  
_

_  
15 th February 2010  
  
Dear Molly,  
  
Your supervisor caught me today.  
I hope you don’t get into trouble.  
She had me removed by the security  
guard, the tall blonde one. Sebastian.  
The one who was in military service.  
He fails spectacularly at hiding his  
homosexuality, don’t you think?  
  
Sherlock  
  
  
_

_  
17 th February 2010_

_Dear Molly,  
  
You got suspended for two days because of me  
even though I told them you forbid me to come in.  
I apologise.  
I bought a catnip toy for Toby and snuck it into your coat’s  
pocket when you weren’t looking.  
It got very positive reviews on Amazon.  
I hope he’ll like it.  
  
_

_Sherlock  
  
  
_

_  
25 th March 2010  
  
Dear Molly,  
  
I exploited you again today.  
I’m sorry.  
I did like your blouse though,  
I wasn’t lying…  
I’m an arsehole.  
  
Sherlock  
  
_

_  
26 th March 2010  
  
Dear Molly,  
  
You’ve had coffee with the new IT guy last night.  
I saw you two when I passed the canteen on  
my way out.  
You laughed so I guess you enjoy his presence…  
 Sherlock  
_ _  
  
_

_30 th March 2010  
  
Dear Molly,  
  
You went out with IT again.  
I wish you wouldn’t and I wonder  
why you fail to recognise his homosexuality.  
Something is odd about him…_

_Sherlock  
  
_

_  
30 th March 2010  
  
Molly,  
  
Why was IT allowed to meet your cat  
but I wasn’t?  
I already told you I’d not experiment on Toby.  
What is this Glee thingy you two are talking about  
on your blog…?  
And what does “XxxxxxxX” mean…?  
  
Sherlock_

_PS: It’s “lovelier”  
PPS: I’ll show you how to turn on spellcheck.  
  
_

_  
1 st April 2010  
  
Dear Molly,  
  
You officially introduced me to IT today.  
John pointed out how rude it was to  
inform you of your boyfriend’s sexual interest like that.  
And to point out your weight gain.  
Your body still absolutely fits the  
generally accepted body ideal,  
if that comforts you.  
  
Sherlock  
  
PS: Do you really think I always spoil everything…?  
_ _  
  
  
2 nd April 2010  
  
Dear Molly,  
  
I’m sorry your boyfriend turned out to  
be a psychopath who used you to get close to me.  
Perhaps it would have been better if  
John or Graham had told you and not me.  
I’m sorry I couldn’t comfort you.  
I didn’t know how.  
But perhaps you didn’t even want me to.  
I’m sorry.  
I know you liked him.  
  
Sherlock.  
  
_

_6 th August 2010_

_Dear Molly,_

_You didn’t show up to work today.  
Mike said you dad died.  
I hope you’re okay  
and you’ll come back soon.  
  
Sherlock  
  
_

_  
13 th August 2010  
  
Dear Molly,  
  
You still haven’t come back to Barts.  
I assume because of your dad’s death.  
I hope you’ll feel better soon.  
  
Sherlock  
_

_  
  
25 th December 2010_

_Dear Molly,  
  
I rarely express sentiment,  
you know that. I’m not good at  
dealing with emotions, you know that as well.  
I hurt you tonight.  
I humiliated you.  
But may I say, I did not intend to.  
I’m not in a good place right now.  
I don’t know what I’m feeling.  
All I know is that I’m not feeling good.  
I’m sorry my brother called you back in to Barts.  
You probably wanted to spend the evening with  
Toby after what happened…  
  
Forgive me.  
  
Yours Sherlock  
  
_

_  
  
  
1 st January 2011  
  
Dear Molly,_

_I met you for the first time  
since Christmas today.  
It was good to see you again.  
  
Happy New Year,  
Sherlock  
_

_  
  
12 th June 2011  
  
Dear Molly,_

_I died today.  
Nevertheless, here I am, lying on your couch.  
Thank you for offering my asylum until  
Mycroft has worked out how to get me abroad  
to start dismantling Moriarty’s network.  
Your cat is sleeping on my chest.  
He’s warm.  
I think I start to like this feline.  
Do you know that I can hear you breathing next doors in your sleep?  
It’s nice that you two are there.  
  
Yours Sherlock  
  
_

_  
3 rd July 2011  
  
Dearest Molly,_

_I’m sorry I have to leave, but I need to protect  
my friends.  
I regret not having told you everything that follows earlier.  
I’m not good with feelings and sentiment.  
I seem to have grown to love you nonetheless.  
I’ve been told I’m incapable of loving but I know how I feel.  
After spending hours and hours stuck in your flat  
while you were at Barts, I’ve worked out what those  
highly irritating feelings I have for you are.  
My timing is as bad as it gets, I know, but as it is  
unlikely you will ever read any of this it hardly matters.  
For the same reason, I’m able pour my  
cold unfeeling heart into this letter.  
Considering when those feelings for you started,  
I have loved you for a very long time, longer than  
I’m willing to admit, even here.  
But I never told you because I was a blind idiot.  
A coward.  
I’m sorry for all the pain and heartache I caused you during the  
past few years since we met.  
I’m sorry for forcing you to keep this huge secret.  
I truly am._

_Mycroft’s men are coming to get me…  
  
Thank you for everything.  
Goodbye, Molly Hooper.  
  
  
I love you, _

_Sherlock Holmes._

  
Molly still sat on Sherlock’s desk chair, staring down at the last sheet in her hand. Unlike all the other letters, it was written on expensive looking letter paper, and the handwriting looked a lot neater. Clearly it had taken the detective a lot of time to formulate his last note to her in a way he approved of.

She didn’t know what she felt. Happiness, to some extent. Pain, definitely. Maybe even anger. Anger because he’d not told her all this in person. Anger because he’d denied them the already limited amount of time they could have spent together.  
But would she have let him go if she’d known about his feelings…?  
Perhaps not.  
Perhaps that was the reason why’d not told her.  
To make things easier for her.  
To make it easier for her to move on.

“Molly, dear…?”  
  
The pathologist looked up when Sherlock’s former landlady appeared in the doorframe.  
  
“Oh… Hello, Mrs Hudson…”

“Are you alright, love…? You’ve been up here for ages…”  
Mrs Hudson frowned concerned.  
“Would you like a cup of tea perhaps? Or some biscuits?”

“Oh no thank you, Mrs Hudson, that’s lovely, but actually I think it’s time for me to go home now…”  
Molly got up from Sherlock’s desk chair and quickly shoved the letters back in the brown envelope, before she grabbed the two piles of letters for either Mycroft or John, and put them in the two different cartons she’d prepared, one with things for Sherlock’s brother, the other for the doctor.  
  
“Oh… Of course, yes… But Molly, dear, you’re always welcome here.”  
  
The pathologist turned to face the small lady, smiling softly and gratefully.  
“Thank you, Mrs Hudson… Honestly… I really appreciate it…”  
  
Downstairs a kettle started to whistle and Mrs Hudson hurried downstairs to her flat, calling over her shoulder. “Please say goodbye before you leave.”  
  
“Promise!”  
 Molly called back, pulling her phone out to send Mycroft a quick text so one of his drivers would take her home. After all she had too many boxes to carry now to take the Tube, and his driver could take the one for Mycroft with himself immediately.  
And as soon as she was home, she needed to write a letter for a certain detective.  
Mycroft would surely have it delivered.  
After all he owed her a favour now.


End file.
